Hot To Build Your Rackmount Chassis
Step 1.
To build this project you will need to buy the rackmount chassis kit found on our shop page. In addition to the kit you will need a set of five #4-40 X 3/8" screws to mount the sprout board to the chassis as well as some 1/8th inch plastic spacers available at any home improvement store. Finally we recommend some weld on #3 acrylic glue to bond the parts together. As this can be difficult to find locally you also can use superglue if you apply it a couple times.
Step 2.
Inspect the components for the chassis. you could have a bottom plate, front face and two corner braces. note the orientation of the faceplate to the base plate. If you glue it backwards it would be bad.
Step 3.
I have left the paper on the components here to make it a little more easy to see how the components line up. the front and bottom plates have tabs that help align them. these corner pieces must be flush with the side of the base plate or the sprout board won't fit.
Step 4.
Here is another picture showing the layout of what you should have.
Step 5.
Next we will be adding the spacers and mounting the board. if you choose to use the Ethernet shield note that you will need to trim the long pins to make it fit into the hole provided as well as mount it to the shield prior to mounting screws.
Step 6.
Here we can see clearly the screw and spacer in place on the board.
Optional Sensors.
Here we can see the front of the sprout board with the temperature / humidity sensor board in place as well as the sound sensor board from spark fun in the second accessory jack (not included)
Optional LCD Display.
Here we have mounted an optional serial LCD display from spark fun. These serial lcd displays are great for many projects and especially in our server room monitor kit. If you choose to use a serial lcd display you will need four #4-40 X 3/4" screws as well.
News and Events
30 June 2010
Lots of new guides added!
We have added a bunch of new guides to help you expand what you can do with your sprout board. Check them out!
21 June 2010
How to drive an AC load
In about 10 minutes we will take you through a simple process to control an AC load using the sprout board…
1 June 2010
Open Source Server Room Initiative
The Sprout Board is the center of a move to open source high priced server room monitoring equipment in an effort…
25 May 2010
Sprout Board available for order!
That’s right! The sprout board can be purchased now!
Testimonials
What people have to say about us.
" Working with the sprout board has been one of the best tinkering project experiences I have ever had. The attention to detail and feature set of the board as well as its clean design lends its self to many applications. Additionally the flexibility in allowing for external sensor and devices makes this extremely powerful for real world projects."
-Jayson Givens
" We needed a server room environmental monitoring system at my employer. After looking into the options we decided to buy the sprout board and rack mount chassis. The project works flawlessly and reliably at 1/5th the cost of a comparable system."
-Tom Needer
